


Defenders of Waifs and Strays

by manycoloureddays



Series: i'll eat myself if you can find a smarter hat than me [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 01:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6590524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manycoloureddays/pseuds/manycoloureddays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jessica has always hated the too cheerful yellow curtains."</p><p>Jessica Jones hates Hufflepuff yellow, being told to smile, and feeling helpless, and when she was 11 she wanted to be the next Harry Potter</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defenders of Waifs and Strays

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful editor and ideas bouncer, you know who you are and I love you!
> 
> warning for references to canon typical violence.

Jessica has always hated the too cheerful yellow curtains. They’re sickening at the best of times. Three days into Christmas break and she wanted to tear them all down, throw them into the common room fire, fly to the nearest muggle village, steal a shotgun and eat it.

Unfortunately Trish would find out, somehow, and guilt her into coming back. Or somehow manage to haunt her from before the grave. Jessica isn’t sure how, but she’s Trish Walker, she could do it.

So instead Jessica was sitting cross-legged on an ancient rug, staring into the common room fire.

“Jones?”

 _Damn it._ She doesn’t usually let people sneak up on her. She doesn’t need to turn around to figure out who was sneaking down the boys’ staircase.

“Go back to bed Malcolm.”

“No.”

“ _Mal_ colm,” she sighed, frustrated, and not at all fond or grateful for the distraction.

“ _Jess_ ica,” he returned, teasing. Then, turning on a knut, “I’m not sleeping until you do.”

She growled, shuffling along the hearthrug until there was room for two. She tried to ignore his self-satisfied smile. Pretty sure all she managed was a weird grimace-smirk, she rolled her eyes. Malcolm had wrapped himself up in a patchwork, crocheted blanket, his face sheet-marked and too exhausted for mid December, he looked so determined she felt oddly like they should be sitting an exam, or waiting outside McGonagall’s office.

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him without a woollen garment of some description during the winter months. Malcolm and coziness seemed synonymous.

“It’s not your fault you know,” he whispered. He had lasted nearly five full minutes without saying anything, which Jessica supposed, was a record of some kind. It was a truth universally acknowledged that a Malcolm faced with someone in pain is a Malcolm who was compelled to help. _Such a bloody Hufflepuff._ Still –

“Yes it is.”

“Jessica – “

“If I’d just told someone.”

“You did Jess, you told McGonagall, you told Trish, you told me.” Malcolm looked genuinely confused. _You don’t get to be confused,_ Jessica thought. She regretted it immediately. She was doing that a lot these days; since the whole shitty mess of last year and the awful clarity that had come crashing down after her Defence exam. The spell finally lifted.

“I should have told someone sooner. I should have stopped him. I could have – “

“Jessica, you’re sixteen. What were you going to do? He is not your responsibility. His actions aren’t your actions, and what you did when he had you under the Imperius Curse was not your fault.” Legally, maybe. It didn’t make the spells go away. Didn’t change the fact that if you looked back far enough in her wands history they would be there, an indelible magical mark, an itch at the back of her memory where some had been erased, and that little box in her mind she was still to scared to open. He used the Imperius Curse on all his victims, Obliviated some, but he’d practiced Legilimency on her.

He hadn’t needed much practice.

“She’s eleven,” she said after a moment.

“I know,” Malcolm burrowed further into his blanket.

“She’s eleven and she’s killed her parents.” Jessica can see her, the tiny blonde Ravenclaw girl, wide eyed and excited like so many first years before her. And then the photo from the Daily Prophet article; Hope Schlottman, blinking unseeingly at the camera, a dazed look on her face until just before the photo loops and she bursts into tears. “I’ve never seen a spell do something like that before. They’re saying there was blood everywhere.” Malcolm shivered beside her. Instead of changing the subject, Jessica jabbed her wand in the direction of the dying flames.

“I heard –“ he swallowed thickly. “I heard that maybe he, made the spell up. Foggy was at Kings Cross. He heard the spell. Reckons he combined a couple of really nasty curses and added something of his own.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” She tried to hold back a shudder, and when she was unsuccessful she ended up with a handful of warm, solid Malcolm-hand. It was half past ass o’clock and no one else was around so she held on tight. “He was good at all the right subjects. He was going to – he told me he was going to apply for the Department of Mysteries.”

She has tried to forget the last few months of her fifth year. They were mostly spent in the seventh year Slytherin dorms, in the Room of Requirement, and Apparating to London on Hogsmeade weekends, when she wasn’t in class, ‘smiling Jessica’ so no one suspected a thing.

That wasn’t wholly true. She had to keep reminding herself, Trish knew. Trish, worried and ever present eyes following her all the way from the Gryffindor table, and a burning, blazing, righteous fury when she finally found out what had been happening under her nose.

Trish Walker with a plan, a wand, and a desire for justice was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing Jessica had ever seen.

“I got out,” she whispered. She was quiet enough that Malcolm could pretend not to hear her. She hoped Malcolm pretended he couldn’t hear her. “I broke through the spells. I knew he wouldn’t just let me go but I didn’t think he’d go after a first year. She was defenceless.”

“And you weren’t?”

Her impulse, as always, was to protest. Of fucking course she wasn’t defenceless. She was older, more experienced, and she’d been hit with an unidentified spell that made her stronger. But that wasn’t really what he meant. And Jessica, contrary to popular belief, knew when to hold back a quip. She didn’t always use the knowledge, but it was there.

She shrugged. “Maybe. That’s not the point. Hope is alone and confused in St Mungo’s, and quite possibly on the receiving end of Ministry incompetence – don’t give me that look! Hermione Granger hasn’t singlehandedly fixed everything in the DMLE. There has to be something I can do.”

Malcolm didn’t respond for a moment. She watched his face trip through half a dozen expressions out of the corner of her eye. Exasperation seemed to win out.

“You can’t blame yourself Jess. None of us can. If we do then he wins, because we sit here chasing our tails with platitudes and guilt and he gets away with it. But maybe –“

 

“He’s already won! He’s in the wind. He could be anywhere, he could be anyone - he can steal faces just as easily as he can make people forget he was there in the first place.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s over. We can still help. Together. We can do something together.”

“Malcolm Ducasse; defender of waifs and strays. How exactly do you propose we help?” she scoffed. “We’re just a bunch of school kids. Who the hell is going to listen to us?”

“We can talk to McGonagall for a start. She knew Harry Potter when he was here at school. I’m sure she has more than enough experience with school kids knowing things teachers don’t. Besides, you’re the one that wants to be a hero.” She blushed, making him chuckle and immediately lifting the mood.

“God, you really don’t forget anything do you?”

“Nope. That’s the problem with boarding schools. None of your eleven year old dreams ever leave you behind. I will never forget your face!”

“Shut up, Malcolm,” she growled, burying her face in her hands.

“No, no, Jess! You were so confused when I got the superhero references – muggle mum, remember? Harry Potter in a cape? It was so sweet!” His grin was so wide she thought it might split his cheeks. “Professor Sprout’s face! ‘A Gryffindor hero, Miss Jones? Not very original.’”

“I was going to be a Hufflepuff hero, you know.”

“Going to be?” He nudged her side until she turned to face him. “You still can be. You, me, Trish, Luke – we can make a difference together Jones.”

“Yeah, yeah, try and convince me in the morning okay?” Malcolm nodded.

“You going to bed?”

“Not yet.” He nodded, shifting until he could wrap his blanket around her shoulders too.

“Me neither.”


End file.
